1. If I told you Cam Schlittler would throw five innings and allow no earned runs with nine strikeouts and the bullpen would throw four innings without allowing an earned run in the series opener against the Red Sox, you would have likely asked how many runs the Yankees won a shutout win by. But they didn’t shut out the Red Sox. They didn’t win. They lost 6-3 as the Yankees’ defense combined to allow six unearned runs in what was an unmitigated defensive disaster.

2. “We just didn’t do a good job taking care of the ball tonight,” Aaron Boone said. “It’s just not up to the way we’ve been playing.”

I disagree. The defense during the Boone era has always been questionable at best, and of late it has been very bad. Four errors on Thursday, one on Wednesday, two on Monday, two on Sunday, one on Saturday, one on Friday. What are you talking about, Boone?

The four errors were the most the Yankees have committed this season. It was the first game the Yankees allowed six or more unearned runs and no earned runs since 1913. The Boone era is full of memorable history.

3. Austin Wells made an error with another catcher’s interference, Schlittler threw a pickoff attempt to second base away, Amed Rosario let a ground ball go through his legs and Yerry De los Santos had a fielding error. Add in a couple of pop-ups that dropped in and the defense was even worse than the box score indicates.

4. Schlittler went to a lot of deep counts in the game in what was the first time the Red Sox have ever challenged him, but if Rosario fields the grounder that went through his legs in the fifth, the Yankees turn an inning-ending double play. Instead, that miscue led to four unearned runs in the inning and a 2-0 Yankees lead turned into a 4-2 deficit. Boone said the ball Rosario couldn’t handle was “in fairness, absolutely lathered,” which was an embarrassing comment. It’s the major leagues. It’s a play that has to be made. It’s a play that Ryan McMahon and Jose Caballero make. It’s a play that Miguel Andujar makes.

“Definitely a play there that I’ve just got to make,” Rosario said. “I take responsibility there.”

Who else would take responsibility?

5. The Rosario miscue led to the first run and the Red Sox tied the game on a sacrifice fly when Jose Caballero couldn’t make an accurate throw home on a shallow fly ball. The Red Sox don’t try to score there if Cody Bellinger is in left field there, but when you have an infielder playing the outfield, that’s what you get, and the Yankees love nothing more than to have their best shortstop not play shortstop.

6. Rosario was in the lineup because the left-handed Connelly Early started. But it made no sense that Rosario was allowed to hit against the just-entered Garrett Whitlock to lead off the eighth inning. The Yankees had two left-handed options on the bench and Boone inexplicably stayed with Rosario. He struck out swinging on four pitches.

7. Offensively, it was another poor showing. The Yankees struck out 10 times, which is bad, and yet it’s not as bad as they’ve been at making contact of late. Rosario, Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells all struck out twice. Ben Rice went 0-for-5 and Bellinger went 0-for-4. It’s going to be hard to win when those two don’t produce. Add in the inability to make major-league plays defensively, and you get the kind of result the Yankees experienced on Thursday.

8. “It’s always tough when we lose,” Caballero said. “The good thing is, there’s always tomorrow.”

Spoken like a player under Annie Boone. There’s always tomorrow … It’s only a day away.

9. Tomorrow in this instance is Friday and it will be Will Warren against Payton Tolle. Tolle dominated the Yankees for six innings in his April 23 start against them at Fenway Park. This is how the first four of those six innings went:

Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Groundout
Strikeout
Groundout
Flyout
Single
Walk
Single
Strikeout
Flyout
Strikeout

The Yankees finally broke through in the fifth inning when Jazz Chisholm hit the first pitch of the inning around Pesky’s Pole to tie the game at 1. Tolle pitched a 1-2-3 sixth inning and left with a 2-1 lead. The Yankees then went to work against the Red Sox’ bullpen in an eventual 4-2 win.

10. Tolle is really good, and against a lineup that is missing the right-handed bats of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, it’s easy to envision him mowing the Yankees down like Early did on Thursday. Warren is going to have be really good and the defense is going to have to avoid producing six unearned runs for the Yankees to avoid a second straight loss to the last-place Red Sox.

1. A day after Jazz Chisholm was ridiculously playing defense with a lollipop in his mouth, the outspoken, 50/50 chaser with a .731 OPS stopped the Yankees’ three-game losing streak with a two-run, go-ahead home run in the sixth inning against the Tigers.

“I was looking for the pitch all night,” Chisholm said. “I missed it earlier in the game, so I was on it.”

The Yankees were able to overcome an early 2-0 deficit to take a 4-2 lead and hold on for a 4-3 win in Detroit.

2. Monday marked the second time this season Chisholm played in a game with a lollipop in his mouth, after taking an at-bat with one earlier this season. Aaron Boone claims he didn’t know about Chisholm batting with a lollipop in his mouth and also wasn’t aware Chisholm played defense with one either until after the game. Instead of defending Chisholm like Boone has with every opportunity (including the idiotic baserunning decision on the infield pop-up in Miami last year), Boone said Chisholm playing with a lollipop “pissed him off” and that he spoke to his second baseman about it.

“He can have all the lollipops he wants now,” Boone said after Tuesday’s game.

3. The home run was Chisholm’s sixth in June and 12th of the year, putting him just 38 away from his goal of 50. (He’s 27 stolen bases away from his goal of 50 steals.)

The Yankees needed the Chisholm home run because Carlos Rodon turned in a poor start: 5.1 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 5 K. It was the eighth start of the season for Rodon and the fifth time he failed to go at least six innings. (He has yet to get more than 18 outs this season.) Yankees starters have only gone at least six innings in two of the last seven games.

4. A day after going 7-for-34 with two walks and 12 strikeouts the Yankees went 9-for-35 with two walks and 13 strikeouts. Every Yankee struck out at least once on Tuesday, Ben Rice and Jasson Dominguez both struck out twice and Spencer Jones struck out three times.

5. Fernando Cruz, Brent Headrick and David Bednar combined for 3 2/3 scoreless innings and the defense played a clean game. It was a much-needed win in a game against a really tough opposing starter in Casey Mize. With the Rays losing to the Royals, the Yankees are now two games up in the loss column in the division.

6. Austin Wells provided an RBI double in the sixth inning that ended up being the difference in the game. It was Wells’ second double of the season. Yes, you read that right: his second double of the season in the 78th game of the season.

7. Rice is 0-for-9 with four strikeouts in Detroit and his OPS has dipped under 1.000 as he’s no longer one of two players in the majors with an OPS of at least 1.000. Yordan Alvarez stands alone at the moment. (Rice is now third in the majors behind Alvarez and Nick Kurtz.)

8. The first thing I do when I see a series against the Tigers coming up is figure out if the Yankees will see Tarik Skubal. Unfortunately, they will on Wednesday (and again next week At Yankee Stadium). Skubal missed more than six weeks after needing elbow surgery and has been OK, but nowhere near his Cy Young-winning, dominant self since returning. That doesn’t mean he won’t be that version of himself against the Yankees.

9. There has been a lot of talk about the Yankees going all out for Skubal at this year’s deadline. If it takes some combination of Will Warren/Elmer Rodriguez and other starting pitchers, sure, go for it. If it involves George Lombard Jr., no thanks. Yes, Skubal at his best is the best pitcher in baseball, but he’s not at his best, had surgery last month and can be had for just money after the season. As a Scott Boras client, Skubal is going to free agency no matter what happens between now and the end of the season, so him going to the Yankees and pitching well or enjoying his time there won’t matter. Any team could use Skubal, even with one with the Yankees’ starting pitching, but they don’t need him to win a championship. Starting pitching won’t be the reason the Yankees don’t win the World Series.

10. Ryan Weathers gets the ball in the series finale and will look to build off his most recent dominant start against the White Sox. The last time Weathers was coming off a strong start he proceeded to have three starts in a row allowing five-plus earned runs, so there’s no telling what version of Weathers will show up on Wednesday. For as good as the Yankees’ rotation is and has been, right now, aside from Schlittler, there’s no telling what any of the other four starters will give you. But with Skubal on the mound, Weathers will need to be as good as he’s been all year for the Yankees to win this series.

1. In the last two weeks, the Yankees have gotten two games postponed, one to late August and one to late September. The first postponement came against the Rays when they were hotter than hot. The next day, the Yankees beat them and the Rays are 3-10 since with the Yankees having cut a seven-game deficit in the loss column down to one. The second postponement came against the Red Sox with the Red Sox having the pitching advantage with Ranger Suarez against Will Warren, and the Yankees without Aaron Judge. Instead, the Yankees were able to start Cam Schlittler against Suarez, won the game and prevented a game without Judge from being played. In the moment, these postponements sucked because postponements suck. In the big picture, these two postponements were blessings.

2. Before Max Fried got hurt, it looked like Ryan Weathers had saved his rotation spot in the battle to be the fifth starter over Will Warren with Carlos Rodon returning. Then Fried went on the injured list and the battle ended with the Yankees needing both Weathers and Warren in the rotation. There’s still a chance the Yankees need both when Fried returns because someone else could get hurt or they could go to a six-man rotation, but if not, it seems like Weathers could be the one to lose his spot. Friday was Weathers’ third time allowing five earned runs in his last four starts. He gave up two home runs to the Red Sox in Friday’s 5-3 loss.

3. Brian Cashman has been trying to find a young, controllable starter through trade since he became general manager nearly three decades ago and Weathers is his latest attempt to conquer that goal. There’s a chance Weathers will work out and be what so many (Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi, Sonny Gray, Jameson Taillon, etc.) weren’t, but so far he’s looked an awful lot like all of the other names that have failed to be consistent performers in the role.

4. Here is what I wrote before the weekend series:

The new expected ceiling of runs for the foreseeable future is four. Anything more than that will be a surprise and anything less than that should be expected. But as I wrote last week, the Yankees are dominant when they score four runs … the Yankees are 32-9 when they score four runs. That’s all they need to do: score four runs and have a 78 percent chance of winning.

The Yankees scored three runs on Friday and lost. Then they scored six runs on Sunday and won. Five of the six runs on Sunday came in an eighth-inning explosion against the Red Sox’ bullpen that included two home runs from Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm. A loss on Sunday would have been crushing because it would have meant wasting another Cam Schlittler performance (5.1 IP, 1 ER) and with the offense and the injured list what they are, the Yankees can’t afford to waste Schlittler starts.

5. The Yankees can’t afford to give away outs either and they are willingly doing so every time the lineup is posted and Anthony Volpe’s name is in it. On Sunday, Volpe’s weak arm led to the Red Sox’ first run when Volpe was unable to throw the ball home despite having ample time to get the runner on a bad send. It’s a play every major-league shortstop should make, and it’s a play that likely every major-league shortstop other than Volpe does make. While Volpe was letting the Red Sox tie the game at 1 , the Yankees best shortstop was standing in right field watching it unfold.

6. Volpe left the bases loaded in his second at-bat on Sunday and left the go-ahead run in scoring position in his third at-bat. He finished the weekend 1-for-7 with a walk. His OPS is down to .644 on the season. He was undeservingly recalled nearly a month ago and has done nothing to be worthy of remaining in the majors. He can’t hit, he can’t field and he can’t throw. His “hot” start has turned into a mirage just like it did last year and the year before that and the year before that. Without Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton (and even Jasson Dominguez), the Yankees need to optimize on the margins as much as possible. They need to squeeze every last percentage point out of their win probability added on offense and defense and playing Volpe at shortstop hurts both. At this point, if you like Volpe, you don’t like the Yankees.

7. J.C. Escarra got sent down before the weekend only to be recalled because Austin Wells went on the injured list with cervical headaches. I’m guessing Wells’ recent change in catcher’s mask is related to the headaches. But if Wells has been experiencing headaches severe enough to send him to the IL, why has he continued to play? Either he didn’t say anything, which hurt him and the team, or he did say something, and the team continued to play him. I think it’s the latter. Given the way past injuries have been handled by the Yankees, it’s likely Wells said something and it was disregarded. When he went to the equipment team and asked to use the hockey goalie mask instead of the traditional catcher’s mask he has always used, didn’t they question the change? Didn’t they want to know why?

8. The headaches aren’t an excuse for Wells, but they will be used as one. He has been catching full games without issue, and he has looked as bad at the plate as he has dating back to last season. So underperformance isn’t anything new for Wells. He has one more hit, as many home runs and seven fewer RBIs than Stanton this season and Stanton hasn’t played since April 24.

9. A six-game road trip to Cleveland and Toronto will be tough. I would sign up for 3-3 right now given the Yankees’ offense and knowing that Boone is going to force idiotic decisions like Volpe at shortstop and batting sixth or seventh in at least half the games on this trip. This is how the probables will likely play out:

Monday: Will Warren vs. Gavin Williams
Tuesday: Gerrit Cole vs. Slade Cecconi
Wednesday: Carlos Rodon vs. Parker Messick
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Ryan Weathers vs. Braydon Fisher/Spencer Miles
Saturday: Cam Schlittler vs. Kevin Gausman
Sunday: Will Warren vs. Patrick Corbin

The Yankees are getting a gift by avoiding Trey Yesavage.

10. The Yankees will open the road trip against Williams, who they hit pretty well last week in the Bronx with three runs in 5 1/3 innings off him. (It didn’t matter because Cole was throwing batting practice.) Warren has only made one career start against the Guardians (last April), so that should play into the Yankees’ favor at least the first time through the order. I expect Warren to pitch well, but I have no expectations for the offense and won’t until Judge returns (and even then I have tempered expectations with the ‘Run It Back’ offense). But the offensive goal remains the same: Score four runs and (likely) win.

1. The Yankees beat a team with a winning record! Their 2-1 win over the Guardians on Thursday marked their fourth win of the season against teams better than .500 (though that stat is somewhat misleading since they lost a series to the Athletics in April when the A’s were over .500). The Yankees are the only team in the majors with fewer than eight wins against winning teams.

2. It wasn’t easy. The Yankees produced only five hits (one for extra bases) and two walks in the game. Slade Cecconi started for the Guardians with the third-worst ERA in the American League, and despite Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill spending multiple innings talking about how bad Cecconi has been and how he can’t strike anyone out, Cecconi threw six innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts. Unfortunately, that’s going to be life for the Yankees’ offense without Aaron Judge.

3. Judge is likely to be out for more than two months with a stress fracture in his ribs that the Yankees needed multiple days to diagnose. That’s not anything new for the Yankees when it comes to diagnosing an injury for Judge. Judge punctured a lung in September 2019 and it wasn’t diagnosed properly until spring training in 2020. The Yankees’ offense has gone as Judge has gone for the last decade and now it’s hard to see it going anywhere often without him.

4. The idea Judge is “expected to return this season” inspires very little confidence. The Yankees are batting close to 1.000 in being wrong on injury diagnoses and injury timelines during the Aaron Boone era. It’s why Boone freaked out on reporters asking him about what the latest specialist Judge is expected to see specializes in. It was a bad look for Boone made worse when he had to check with the team’s public relations head, only for the public relations head to say he didn’t know and would have to look into it. Not knowing what the specialist specializes in who your best player — whom you still owe more than $200 million — is going to visit isn’t a big deal. Nothing to see here. Maybe they can start ramping Judge up in a couple of months without re-imaging him like they did Luis Severino in 2019, only to eventually say in hindsight they should have re-imaged Severino before starting his throwing program.

5. The last time Judge missed an extended period of time was during 2023. Judge got hurt at Dodger Stadium on June 3, wasn’t in the lineup the next day and didn’t play again until July 28. The Yankees went 19-23 in his absence. He went on the injured list on pace to challenge his record-setting home run total from the year before. When he came back, his OPS dropped by 113 points and the Yankees went 27-30 and missed the playoffs.

6. These Yankees aren’t going to miss the playoffs, but they may not win the division without Judge for so long. The Yankees’ roster is built under the assumption that Judge won’t just be a superstar, but an otherworldly, once-in-a-generation player. When he’s anything other than the best hitter on the planet, the Yankees are just another team. It’s not a coincidence the Yankees are 11-12 since May 6 and that during that time Judge has a .677 OPS. He’s the single-most important player on the roster.

7. The Yankees as a whole are better equipped to handle life without Judge than they were in the past. They have the best rotation even without Max Fried. That alone is enough to prevent lengthy losing streaks and keep them in nearly every game. But the way they will have to win now will look a lot like it did on Thursday when they eked out two runs and needed a strong starting effort and a shutdown relief effort. The new expected ceiling of runs for the foreseeable future is four. Anything more than that will be a surprise and anything less than that should be expected. But as I wrote last week, the Yankees are dominant when they score four runs. It didn’t show against Cleveland because Cam Schlittler had the worst start of his career and Gerrit Cole was serving up batting practice, but the Yankees are 32-9 when they score four runs. That’s all they need to do: score four runs and have a 78 percent chance of winning.

8. If you thought the Yankees’ lineup was inconsistent and frustratingly bad before, well, you’re about to see a whole other level of it. The lineup went from three hitters to now two (Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger). There’s possibly a third in Paul Goldschmidt until the clock strikes midnight on his turn-back-the-clock production. Efforts like the one Cecconi had on Thursday are going become the norm. A lineup made up of two-thirds of batters who would do anything to have and maintain league-average metrics is going to be less fun to watch than it has been. The Yankees desperately need Giancarlo Stanton and Jasson Dominguez to return and they needed them back yesterday.

9. Ryan Weathers will get his first taste of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry on Friday night. Weathers has only faced three current Red Sox before, and they have all homered off of him. Weathers has allowed five earned runs in two of his last three starts, and that’s not going to cut it ever, let alone without Judge. Weathers needs to be the pitcher who’s capable of dominating like he did two weeks ago against the Rays or something close to that.

10. Former Yankee Sonny Gray goes for the Red Sox. Gray deserves to be booed endlessly. Not for his performance with the Yankees necessarily (which was good in 2017 before being putrid in 2018), but because of how he would assess his horrible performances with the team, always citing “good stuff” no matter how atrocious he was, and for the way he talked about his time with the Yankees this past winter, saying he never wanted to be traded there in 2017, even though he wrote a piece in The Players’ Tribune following the trade stating the opposite. I’m expecting Gray to pitch extremely well on Friday because that’s what ex-Yankees do against their former team. Weathers needs to be just as good, if not better, for the depleted offense.

1. Aaron Judge sat out with a bone bruise, Cam Schlittler had his worst start in the majors and the Yankees lost again to a team above .500. The Yankees have had some bad losses this season (mostly due to the bullpen), and while Tuesday’s loss wasn’t necessarily a “bad loss,” it was just a bad day.

2. The bad day started when the lineup was posted and Judge’s name wasn’t in it for the first time in 2026. A day off? Odd, considering the Yankees had Monday off. No, it wasn’t just a day off. Apparently, Judge has been dealing with discomfort for some time and it reached the point where he couldn’t play. At least we know why he has a .649 OPS since May 7. The injury seems to be a bone bruise in Judge’s rib cage that he’s feeling in his right shoulder? The last time Judge had a weird injury like this, it was an undiagnosed punctured lung that would have kept him out for the start of the 2020 season, if that season had started on time. I have zero faith that the Yankees will properly diagnose and treat Judge’s injury. The Yankees’ mismanagement of injuries during the Aaron Boone era has been a disgrace, dating back to 2018. Look no further than the Yankees telling us Giancarlo Stanton would avoid an injured list stint the day after hurting his calf in Houston on April 24. It’s June 3 and he hasn’t played since.

3. The bad day continued with Schlittler allowing five earned runs for the first time in 29 major-league starts (postseason included). He allowed his third home run of the season and couldn’t make it through five innings for the first time since last September. Oh well. If anyone deserves a pass for a bad game, it’s Schlittler.

4. The offense wasn’t very good, but that’s no surprise. The 13-run outburst on Sunday made everyone forget or not notice that the team sent the minimum amount of hitters to the plate in the other eight innings. On Tuesday, Paul Goldschmidt — batting second — drove in all four Yankees runs. Goldschmidt went 3-for-5 with a double and a home run. The rest of the lineup went 5-for-31 with no extra-base hits. The Yankees’ offense goes as Judge goes. That has been the case for a long time, and without Judge in the lineup, the offense went nowhere other than to another loss to a team with a winning record. Luckily, for the Yankees, there are only four other teams in the American League with winning records.

5. It does look like the Yankees will eventually get some internal bullpen help to begin to fix the weakest part of the team. Carlos Lagrange will being working out of the bullpen in Triple-A with the plan to join the Yankees’ bullpen and bolster a relief staff that has minimal trustworthy options and several DFA candidates.

6. The “hot” start Anthony Volpe had that allowed him to stay in the majors upon Jose Caballero’s return appears to be the fourth straight mirage to begin the season for him. Volpe went 0-for-4 on Tuesday and his OPS is down to .719. Soon enough he will be back to the mid-600s where he has always been.

7. Austin Wells would give up half of his salary to be in the mid-600s. Yet another 0-for-4 on Tuesday from Wells has his slash line down to .173/.288/.266. He remains at one double (hit on April 7) and seven RBIs (he has two since the end of April) on the season.

8. Jazz Chisholm went on the Tonight Show on Monday and said the Yankees were going to win the World Series. He said the same thing in 2024 and 2025 and then did everything he could in the playoffs to not help them win the World Series. The Guardians’ broadcast team wondering out loud how someone hitting .239 could get on the Tonight Show was pretty funny. I wish I had thought of that.

9. The answer to the Yankees’ shortstop problem may be getting closer to the majors. After going 7-for-55 (.127) with no extra-base hits in his first 15 Triple-A games, George Lombard Jr. is 20-for-55 (.364) with seven extra-base hits in his last 14 games. He’s starting to figure out the top minor-league level and once he does that, the Yankees may have the shortstop of the future they thought they were getting at the start of 2023.

10. Gerrit Cole will make his third start of the season on Wednesday. If he’s as good as he was in his first two, the Yankees will get back in the win column and pick up a win against a team with a winning record. The Guardians will send their best starter to the mound in Gavin Williams, who leads the league in wins (8) and innings pitched (76.1). The Yankees can’t afford to lose both Schlittler and Cole starts in a series.